The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008 
to establish a regional SDI which can be embedded into NSDI. 
Nigeria will be a keyhole through which the paper will address 
various issues surrounding SDI in Federal State developing 
countries. 
Much has been said on SDI and its implementation strategies, 
but there are still several cases of failure of SDI projects in 
developing countries. Most organizations is such countries tend 
to implement standalone system so also governments spend 
more on GIS development with little result. There is need to 
narrow down into those circumstances surrounding each 
country or region. This will allow more dept knowledge to why 
many SDI projects fail. The paper did not provide a recipe of 
how SDI can be implemented in such critical situations, but we 
have opened up more research questions that can help resolve 
problem of failing SDI projects. And we also try to pin-point the 
link between governance systems in less developed countries 
and SDI initiatives. With this governance approach to SDI 
implementation, there are greater chances of success in 
establishing SDI in developing countries. 
2 FEDERAL STATE SYSTEM OVERVIEW 
Decentralization is not easily defined. It takes many forms and 
has several dimensions. Indeed, a wide variety of institutional 
restructurings are encompassed by this label, and several 
variants may be operating at the same time within a country, 
and even within a sector. But it has significant repercussions for 
resource mobilization and allocation, and ultimate macro- 
economic stability, service delivery, and equity. However, there 
difficult issues of equity and distributions, coordination’s, 
stability, size and economy stand of decentralized sectors as 
well as the performance of the sectors. They appear to be 
dilemmas that generate strong arguments between scholars 
(Litvack et al., 1998). The benefits of decentralization policies 
to governance system are more clearly and widely discussed as 
compare with the challenges that come with its proper 
implementation. Therefore more of its challenges will be 
discussed in this paper rather than its benefits. 
There are three main broad types of decentralization: political, 
administrative and fiscal. Political decentralization is the 
process of transferring the power and authority to sub national 
level. Administrative decentralization is the transfer of 
authority and responsibility of service provision of some 
selected public services to the lower levels or agencies. Fiscal 
decentralization is the resource re-allocation to sub-national 
levels of the government (Work, 2003). 
Within this decentralization types, Work identified four forms 
of decentralization that include devolution, delegation, 
déconcentration and divestment. While terms like devolution is 
commonly used in political decentralization, déconcentration 
and delegation are common within administrative 
decentralization. Political decentralization is always inform of a 
framework on which all institutions under public system is built 
to necessitate universal participation and new approach to 
community institutions and social capital (Work, 2003). More 
often, devolution leads to a polycentric system of governing 
where all tiers of government are more autonomy in the 
governance and resource control. This is sometimes referred to 
as federalism system of government. 
As noted by Baldi, federalism is always accompanied by 
decentralization, but it is not a necessary condition for 
decentralization and also decentralization is not sufficient 
enough to facilitate federalism. The line between the two is 
however close and makes it very difficult to separate one from 
the other. There is difficulty differentiating between a federal 
state, unitary state practicing déconcentration and a 
decentralized unitary state (Work, 2003). 
Federal states already have a structured system, devolving 
power and authority to each level within the system; more of 
polycentricism. Unitary system differs as the central 
government dictates the limit and conditions with delegation of 
authority to sub-national level; more hierarchical system (Work, 
2003). Most developing countries that are practicing federal 
state do not practice full federal system as what they refer to as 
federal state is synonymous to unitary system. A good example 
of such countries is Nigeria. However there seems to be 
varieties of decentralization practices evolving in various 
countries based on the factors such as cultural influence, 
political influence amongst others. This has great impact on 
institutions established in such systems. Public institutions have 
more difficulties carrying out its operations, controlling it 
resources and offering services within its locality. 
Therefore the problem becomes complex for Geo-information 
organization under a federal state system due to the institutional 
complexity among other crucial issues that may not well be 
defined in decentralization policy adopted by developing 
countries. According to Litvack et al (1998) it is a great 
challenge for many countries to coordinate doctoral reforms 
undertaking by a ministry of the central government with 
decentralization of fiscal, political, and administration 
responsibilities to local government. Most of these countries are 
developing countries, which rely on decentralization policy 
defined over 20 years ago. Ministries under these government 
system struggle to define clearly their responsibilities and 
boundaries across the tiers of government. 
This complexity does affect the definition of the system as a 
whole and also go a long way in affecting various sectors under 
the system. More difficult is the case of GI organizations that 
not only deals with the above responsibilities but also finds 
themselves in the role of service provision and management of 
spatial data. Issues like data collection, data management, 
location vis-à-vis ownership of data is not clearly defined in 
decentralization policies adopted by most developing countries. 
Furthermore, GI organization that is spread through all levels of 
government always finds it more difficult to operate within each 
level of government. Its basic service which is needed at the 
local level is been controlled and managed by the state level, 
based on the policies made at the national level. Thus the 
organization structure also will be affected as well as the 
information flow through the organization. Interest on 
information filtering and management will be shared between 
the controlling state level and the national level that is the top 
level policy maker. Many times the autonomy of the sub 
national level is taken to the extreme of making its policy 
outside the national policy. Also in the case of unitary system, 
lower level of the government suffer control from the top level 
as most of its activities is defined from the top. 
3 NIGERIA FEDERAL SYSTEM AND GI 
ORGANIZATION EXPERIENCE 
The system of governance in Nigeria is based on the 1976 Local 
Government Policy. This was fully institutionalized in the 
constitution in 1979. The policy established 3 tiers of 
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